


What You Wanted

by Sasha Mittens Wayblight (toadcatcher)



Category: Amphibia (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied Self-Harm, Mild Blood, signs of a panic attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25866973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toadcatcher/pseuds/Sasha%20Mittens%20Wayblight
Summary: On a quiet night in Amphibia, two estranged human girls have nightmares about each other. In their restless sleep, each gives the other what she wants.
Relationships: Anne Boonchuy & Sasha Waybright, Anne Boonchuy & Sprig Plantar, Grime (Disney: Amphibia) & Sasha Waybright
Comments: 8
Kudos: 83





	What You Wanted

Anne let out a slow exhale as she stood in front of the ornate wooden door. After years of travelling through Amphibia, they’d finally found it. Once they were through, they would be home. So there was only one thing left to do. Anne looked over her shoulder at her friends and smiled. Marcy returned the smile. Sasha did nothing, her hood pulled down over her eyes.  
  
“Ready to go?”  
  
Marcy nodded. She had always been ready. She waited for neither of them and stepped past Anne, into the inky blackness behind the door. Anne wasn’t surprised. She turned back to Sasha, reaching her hand out. Sasha did not take it.  
  
“Sash?”  
  
Sasha scoffed, looking down at the floor.  
  
“You know I’m not going with you,” she said.  
  
“Wait, what? Of course you are,” Anne said.  
  
Sasha shook her head.  
  
“I told you already. You’re better off without me.”  
  
“But that isn’t true!” Anne said.  
  
“Of course it is, Anne. I hurt you.” Sasha pulled her hood back. She was keeping it together, but her eyes were threatening tears. She was never like this. “I was never good enough to be your friend.”  
  
“Sasha, it’s not like that, I—” Anne stopped herself and sighed. “I mean, you did hurt me.” Anne frowned as Sasha averted her eyes. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. It doesn’t mean we can’t do better!” She reached her hand out again. “I want to, Sasha. I never wanted to leave you.”  
  
Sasha swiped the hand away.  
  
“It isn’t going to happen,” she said.  
  
Anne took a step forward to close the distance between them and Sasha stepped back.  
  
“Please come with me,” Anne said.  
  
“Why should I?”  
  
Anne paused for a second. Took a deep breath. Was she really about to say this?  
  
“Because I want you with me,” she said. “Because I love you.”  
  
Sasha’s eyes locked back onto Anne’s. A small laugh escaped her mouth. Her expression went from guilty and dismal to sour and twisted. She cocked her head to one side.  
  
“Oh, do you, Anne? Do you love me?” she said. “When’s the last time that worked out for you?”  
  
“Stop it,” Anne said.  
  
This time, Sasha took a step forward. They were face to face now, barely a foot apart.  
  
“I’m not going with you.” Sasha narrowed her eyes. “End of discussion.”  
  
Anne didn’t break eye contact.  
  
“That isn’t going to work anymore,” she said.  
  
“Yeah, Anne,” Sasha said, placing one hand on her sword, “I know.” She pulled away from Anne, taking several steps back into the middle of the room.  
  
Anne hadn’t registered their surroundings before, but now they seemed clear and concrete. There were plenty of places like it in Amphibia, rough stone bricks precariously arranged into a big, open room. But Anne knew what this one reminded her of, even with the walls shutting the rest of Amphibia out. Toad Tower.  
  
Anne was suddenly also aware of the sword in her hands.  
  
“Please don’t make me do this,” Anne said.  
  
“Do what, Anne?” Sasha drew her sword and planted her feet. “We both know how this one ends.”  
  
Sasha leaped forward, delivering a barrage of slashes that Anne parried, their swords clanging loudly throughout the room. Anne jumped back, and then lunged, swinging her sword down over her head. Sasha brought her own up to meet it without missing a beat. Anne struggled as they brought their hands down to chest level, their swords pressed together there between them. Sasha smirked, baring her teeth.  
  
“What’s the matter? Nervous?”  
  
“You aren’t really like this,” Anne said, struggling as she pressed her blade in harder. With a final push, she forced Sasha’s sword left, and then down toward the floor. She swung again near the hilt, knocking it away, leaving it skidding across the floor. She pointed her weapon at Sasha’s chin. “Can we please go home?”  
  
Sasha avoided Anne’s eyes, looking down at the sword in front of her. She glanced up, then back down, and put both of her hands on the blade. Blood trickled out of her palms, down the steel of the sword, and dripped onto the cold rock floor. With an impossible strength, Sasha wrenched Anne’s sword blade-first from her hands and threw it across the room.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Sasha said.  
  
Anne was frozen stiff as Sasha kicked her in the chest, sending her crashing through the door.  
  
“No!” A jolt went through Anne’s body, and she blinked, looking around her frantically.  
  
But she wasn’t in Toad Tower, or a building that looked like it. She wasn’t in an inky black void. She was somewhere warm. Comfortable. The Fwagon.  
  
“Anne,” whispered Sprig. She glanced to her left at him, and he put one finger to his mouth, pointing at Polly sleeping on a cushion nearby.  
  
That’s right, she remembered. They were on their way to Newtopia. She wasn’t anywhere close to finding a way home, let alone with Sasha and Marcy. She let the realization comfort and burden her.  
  
“I wasn’t sure if I should wake you,” Sprig said. “Are you okay?”  
  
“I’m okay, Sprig,” Anne whispered.  
  
Sprig looked like he was thinking. He sat up in his seat.  
  
“You were fighting in your sleep again.”  
  
Anne crossed her arms and said nothing.  
  
“Was it Sasha?” Sprig asked.  
  
“I don’t… really want to talk about it. Seriously, I’m fine.”  
  
“Are you sure? I—”  
  
“I’m fine, Sprig!” Anne caught herself. She was raising her voice. “Just… not right now, okay?”  
  
“Okay,” Sprig said, looking down at his feet.  
  
They sat there for a minute, not looking at each other. Anne sighed.  
  
“Hey,” she said, placing her hand on his head. “I love you, buddy.”  
  
Sprig smiled, warm and subtle, not his usual goofy grin.  
  
“I love you too, Anne.”  
  
He shifted a little closer to her, and they sat there, listening to the turning wheels of the Fwagon until Sprig drifted off to sleep. Anne sighed and closed her eyes, praying that she would soon be able to see her best friends somewhere other than her nightmares.  
  


* * *

Sasha’s boots squelched underfoot as she trudged through the misty bog. The fog was thick enough now that she couldn’t even see a few feet ahead. She didn’t know where they were going, but she had a feeling in her stomach. She shifted her eyes left to glance at the stranger walking next to her. A long, wiry girl with unkempt clothes and tangled hair. There was a leaf poking out from behind her ear and a stick laying flat near the back of her head. Something was always in her hair, somehow. She looked so different from the way she did back home. Before all of this.  
  
Sasha frowned, and cut through the silence that was almost as thick as the air. It was probably about time she said something.  
  
“Hey, Anne?”  
  
“What is it?” Anne said, barely even glancing at her.  
  
Sasha hadn’t noticed before, but Anne’s face was stern and pained. She was angry, and that was rare for her. Guilt washed over Sasha, and all at once, her confidence faltered.  
  
“I just wanted to talk about the way I treated you before… everything. I mean, the way I talked to you and stuff… It was really messed up, like—” Impossible as it seemed, Sasha was stumbling over her words. What was she even trying to say? “I just mean, like, I get it, if you’re still mad at me, or if you hate me, but—”  
  
She cut herself off when she noticed the rhythm of Anne’s feet beside her had stopped. She looked over her shoulder, and there she was, looking down at the ground, trembling.  
  
“Do you seriously think I’m still mad about that?” Anne looked up, gritting her teeth at Sasha, half chuckling, half choking back tears. “Are you kidding me?”  
  
“Anne? Anne, I—”  
  
And then she remembered. The feeling of her sword pulling out of him, that warm blood on her hands, his limp body falling down in front of her boots, next to the others. She remembered how easy it was. Hopediah, Sprig, and… Sasha gagged, her hand darting up to clutch her throat.  
  
How could she even be capable of something like that?  
  
“Anne, I don’t—I’m so—I’m—” Sasha took in quick, shallow breaths. There was a word she was looking for, but she didn’t know what it was, or if it would even be worth saying.  
  
“Shut up. Stop.” Anne’s voice was rough and caustic. Sasha had never seen her like this, but it felt like an old wound reopening. “I never hated you, Sasha. Even after everything that happened, I wanted things to be alright. I thought they could be. I trusted you.”  
  
“I know,” whispered Sasha. Every muscle in her body was tense. It was so cold.  
  
“But I was wrong. You took everything from me.” Anne let the sentence hang in the air like a spider weaving a web. She seemed much taller than Sasha. “That’s all you do, Sasha. All you know how to do is take.”  
  
Sasha was despondent now. She kept staring at the ground, eyes wide. She tried to force out more shallow breaths, but all that escaped her mouth was “I know, I know, I know…”  
  
Anne stepped past Sasha without looking at her.  
  
“Let’s go home. That’s what you wanted, right?”  
  
As Anne disappeared into the mist, Sasha awoke with her head glued to her pillow, drenched with a sticky cold sweat. She sat up, seething, tears flowing from her eyes, and dug her nails into her hair. Every part of her was shaking. She sobbed and sputtered, doing her best to resist tearing her scalp apart.  
  
At least Anne was alive in this one. She choked on her own spit, pressed her palms hard into her eyes. Dammit, dammit, dammit. She sat there for ten long minutes, trying to slow down her breathing. She was somewhat successful. It wasn’t real. She could never kill anyone. She thought this, and almost believed it.  
  
She wiped her face with her already-damp shirt and changed out of it. She groaned, stretching and looking around the room. He wasn’t there. She stepped out of the mill in just her t-shirt and shorts and shivered. She felt like a child. Probably looked like one, too, she thought.  
  
Sasha walked around the back of the old relic, and there he was. The old toad sat up in front of a rock, his head propped up by one strong arm. He was staring off into space again.  
  
“You too, huh, Grimesy?”  
  
Captain Grime jumped, and then, registering that it was only his lieutenant, relaxed again.  
  
“Er, hello, Sasha,” said Grime. “Yes. Me too.”  
  
Sasha walked over and sat on the grass next to him.  
  
“Was it the falling dream again?” he said.  
  
“Hah,” she said. “I kinda wish.”  
  
Grime nodded, grunting.  
  
“What about you?” she said. “What’s got you up?”  
  
“It isn’t important,” he said. “Believe it or not, I’ve done some things in the past that I’m not proud of.”  
  
“Hey,” Sasha said, laying down, “join the club.”  
  
They were silent for awhile, then. Sasha blinked, staring up at the stars. They were so different from the ones she used to see back at home. And she’d never seen so many. It made her feel small.  
  
Back then, she’d been camping with Anne and Marcy, just a few times. Next to a smoldering fire, before they drifted off to sleep, they would laze and talk while staring up at a cloudless starry sky. It was weird, but she suddenly couldn’t remember what those conversations were like. She used to adore those memories of the three of them together. Now thinking about them just made her stomach hurt.  
  
She wondered, if they ever got home, whether or not she would be able to look forward to something like that again. And then she pushed that thought away. She had to let Anne go. It would be the same with Marcy. She couldn’t let herself hurt them anymore.  
  
Tears were welling up in her eyes again. She rolled over on her side, facing away from Grime.  
  
“Grime?” she said.  
  
Grime pretended not to hear the quaver in her voice.  
  
“Yes, Sasha?”  
  
“I’m glad I’m not alone.”  
  
There were a few seconds of silence, where the only sound was the regular buzz of the insects in the nearby woods.  
  
“So am I,” Grime said. He closed his eyes.  
  
They would fall asleep like that, eventually—Grime, slumped against his rock, and Sasha, a few feet away, laying on her side on the cold wet grass. Before that, though, Sasha thought for a long time about how much she trusted herself. Would she hurt Grime, too?  
  
She didn’t come to any conclusions.


End file.
